


...Alfendi.

by MabelLover



Series: Your name is... [2]
Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe, Child Abuse, Death in Childbirth, Drug Addiction, Gen, Grooming, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Murder, Poisoning, Teen Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:00:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29982522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MabelLover/pseuds/MabelLover
Summary: Your name is Alfendi. You live in an orphanage.A man comes to the orphanage. He takes an interest in you.
Relationships: Alfendi Layton & Keelan Makepeace, Alfendi Layton & Original Character(s)
Series: Your name is... [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683043





	...Alfendi.

The man comes to the orphanage and watches you in the grass, pulling out weeds. Your fingers are covered in dirt and your pants are painted green from the grass, and that man watches you with narrowed eyes. You gaze back at him, a perfectly leveled look to match his blank stare. He looks back at the building, uninterested, but you rise from your seat in the soil and run back inside through the service door.

The children ignore you, as usual. They have more to do than to talk with you, for the fear of punishment is very real in this wretched place. The adults ignore you as well when you pick up a laundry basket and run off to the service corridor near the visitor’s hall. Peeking through the crack on the painted door to seem just like the wall on the other side, you see the procession of toddlers that walk down the stairs, like prisoners.

The man gazes at them, evaluating their appearances. You know that they all have their heads down and their hopes up, a disgusting feeling of being able to escape this place – they ought to know that most of them will die trapped in this place, like you will one day. It’s been decided since the day their mothers dumped them here, leaving those babies at the hands of the cruel adults of the orphanage.

And yet, the man sees some worth in a snotty blonde toddler. You recall her vaguely – her name is Sophie Dalton, and she likes oatmeal. You were these children’s nanny too many times, clearly, if you can remember their preferences so well. The man puts his hand on Sophie’s shoulder and leads her to his side, drawing a separation between the dirty toddlers and the newly-formed family.

He peeks at you and flashes a small grin.

You jump from surprise, a shiver running down your spine. Grabbing the laundry basket, you quickly run away. The children avoid your eyes and you avoid the adults’, the dark corridor tiny and cramped. You can’t quite recall the feeling of the grass on your hands, of the weeds making tiny cuts on your fingers.

But instead of going out again, Father Thompson calls out to you.

“Alfendi,” he says, his beer belly prominent as usual and his wig slipping down his head, “what are you doing?”

You shrug and clutch the laundry basket closer to your chest. Father Thompson clicks his tongue in disapproval to your wordless answer, as usual, and you stare on blankly, as usual. “Come with me, Alfendi,” he says, his cruel eyes looking at you with gleeful anticipation. You gulp and follow him into the room, a statue of the Virgin overseeing the priest’s affairs from her high stool, a bed with the linens embroidered in gold and silver. Father Thompson closes the door, quietly.

He motions for you to place down the basket, and you do so and sit next to him on the bed, feet dangling off the edge. Father Thompson grabs onto his chaplet and places it around your neck.

“Have you been feeling alright, child?” He rubs his hand on your cheek, concern painting his features into Jesus himself, a perfect figure of piety. You stay quiet and let your eyes wander to the ground.

Father Thompson slaps you. It stings, and your cheek his red when you peek at the mirror on the bedside table, but you know not to let tears run down your face. He looks at you, cruel amusement in his eyes.

“You’re learning,” he rubs his hand on your bruised cheek. You lean in at the affection subconsciously, like a stray puppy at being offered food, and you have to bite your tongue until you make blood to avoid stopping the movement. What he likes the least is being undecisive. Stopping before you finish what you were doing. And so, you allow him to coddle you like a pet, patting you head and surreptitiously sneaking his other hand into your thigh, playing with the edge of you pants. You stiffen up, afraid that he’ll ask that of you again, but Father Thompson lets go with a vacant smile.

“Make me some tea again, Alfendi. That moonflower tea.”

You stand up and walk over to the kettle, the water already cold. Reaching into your pockets, you take out the weed and let it fall into the kettle.

“Good,” Father Thompson says, eyeing the kettle with greed. “Now, be a good boy and leave.”

You do it gladly. It’d be best to leave another child to attend to the priest for the night, and you indeed spot Camellia shaking outside of the room, just by the door, with her book of prayers in hand. Her braids jump when she grabs onto your wrist and quickly whispers into your ear. “A man came by and took a kid. They’re saying he also wants to take you.”

“Say that to Father Thompson,” you grab her shirt and make sure to dig your nails into her arms to drive in your point, “and I’ll cut your tongue off.”

She gulps and gives you an imperceptible nod. You look away from her and mingle with the other children. Your pants are still green from sitting on the grass outside, but you know that there is no more soap for today, and so you head back to the broom closet that you call a room and step out of them as soon as you close the door. Letting them rest on the floor, you feel your way into your bed and lay down, falling asleep on an empty stomach. The adults might scold you tomorrow, but that is still a long way from here.

You sleep of a family with that man, an impossible thing. You wake up from that nightmare.

The water is cold as always when you step into the showers, pants in hand. Camellia gave you the stub of soap from the bar that she received two days ago, and you clean your garment to the best of your abilities. The children scream at each other to hurry and step out, and Father Thompson looks at the kids with a greedy look on his face and something else that you’ve learned to associate with him and yet never could name. Camellia hands you an extra pair of pants – too big for your figure, but a belt from Jonas, a kid just around your size, makes them fit around your waist.

You leave without thanking them. They are idiots.

The drafty corridors are more cramped than usual, with all of the preparations for the mass. You can’t handle this crap, these kids, and so you go to the unlocked window in the first floor – the one that they always forget about – and wriggle your way out of the orphanage. You fall face first on the ground, but you shrug off the pain and sit up. The moonflower smiles up to you.

You take the long way to the chapel. The skies are clear and the sun is shining and you can peek at the town in the distance. You’ve heard of it, of course: London, the capital, a land of opportunities to win in life or to condemn your children to the same fate you had. A dirty orphan, belonging in a dirty orphanage and eating porridge for the rest of your life. Your tongue is bitten again, and you just know that the scars that litter it will never disappear.

And the chapel is finally in your view, a short, large building that is more akin to a gym than those beautiful constructions from the books Camellia hides under her bed. You’ve taken to hide things under yours too – botanical tomes that no one will miss from the storage room. Camellia read them for you, and you memorized them by heart, front and back, even though no one taught you your letters. And, just like that, you murmur along to Father Thompson’s slightly off droning, like it usually is the day after he asks you to make tea. You wonder if, once again, he’ll make you stay in his room. Under your tree, near enough the other kids to be able to hear the most of their conversations and yet far enough to avoid Camellia’s looks without drawing suspicion, you stay by yourself, clutching the weeds with your hands inside the pockets. Your hands are on fire.

“That was quite the look you had on your face yesterday.”

You’d be lying if you said you didn’t jump from the surprise. The man chuckles, a look out of place in his gaunt face and large nose. It reminds you of your mother’s laughter, a terrifying prelude to whatever she wished with you that night. It’s the same energy, and yet you find yourself safer with this man than you ever did in this place. It’s curious, the way instinct works.

“I like to… collect certain children. I still haven’t found the right one, but I believe you might be it.”

The man keeps a leveled voice, and you can’t read it at all. It’s been quite some time ever since you can’t at least ascertain some of the motivations that surround you, but this man… This man is a blank slate. “Why would you believe so?” You need answers.

“Your eyes,” he answers. “I have the belief that we all desire for peace, yourself included.”

The man leans in to you, nose meeting nose, your own red hair mixing in with his yellow one. “’Fend thee and make peace.” A chuckle. “Or were you already planning on that?” He grabs your hand littered in cuts from the weeds and dangles it in front of you. You pull it back forcefully.

The man tilts his head in amusement. “Should you need it, I can take you in.”

“For what in return?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he walks back, disappearing into the tree line, like he’d never been there at all. When you look back at the chapel, Camellia is there, looking at you, pale. Everyone is looking away, engrossed in whatever Father Thompson is saying. The older girl walks up to you in large strides.

“What did he want?” she asks. Camellia is like that, always concerned about you, no matter the stupidity of trying to look after someone else in this place. You know she’s lost other protégés to sickness and to beatings, to people who came from far away and bought orphans to do the heavy works for them. You’ve watched her tend to Father Thompson to buy his favor, and you’ve watched her concern over his interest in you, your threats doing nothing to dissuade her.

“Nothing much.”

She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she just slips you more moonflower into your pockets and glances at the chapel. Father Thompson sways a little while he speaks. “I don’t care if you cut my tongue off,” she whispers, “I still want you to survive, alright?”

“As long as you don’t tell him anything.”

She nods, and leaves. You notice the way her belly has rounded, and you know that Camellia doesn’t have much time here before they lock her up as a nun and a new child takes her place.

Well, it doesn’t really matter to you anyways.

The wind blows and you can hear the last of the choir before the clouds cover the sky completely. They are dark and full and everyone runs inside when the rain begins. The dark maze of the corridors full once more, children and children upon them. You run away from Father Thompson, who is overseeing the mess, and skate through the hallways until you reach a tall, lanky set of stairs and go up. It’s tighter than in most places of the orphanage, which says much, and you have to turn and walk sideways at some point. You reach a door. It’s made of dark wood and sports a few holes where the doorknob used to be, and the floor in front of it is filthy and marked where the door runs. It’s the access to the attic, where it rains and snows through the holes in the roof, and where you save the extra moonflower. No one else comes up here, you know it.

You spot the man walking out of the gates of the orphanage through the broken glass of the window. He looks up at the building, and you can almost swear he spots you and smiles.

Father Thompson sits up on the bed when you bring him a cup of tea. He grabs it greedily – you hide your expression of disgust – and drinks it in two gulps, trying to catch the tea that flows away from his mouth with his free hand. His moustache is wet and his shirt will need to be changed, so you walk to the closet to bring out the pajamas and an extra rag.

He lays down on the bed and begins to talk to himself. You sigh, knowing that he’ll stay that way until at least tomorrow morning, and go back to him, adjusting the pillows behind Father Thompson. You grab the edge of his shirt and pull it up, carefully taking the arms off it, and he froths a little, which you clean with the rag.

Camellia is usually the one who deals with this, but she hasn’t appeared yet. You wonder if the adults held her back, trying to sell her off to yet another convent for when her kid is born, or if she just died and nobody bothered to tell you. It wouldn’t be strange for that to happen – half of the mothers in this place are dead and buried before the baby was even born.

“Al- _fendi_ ,” Father Thompson shrieks and grabs your arm, roughly. You hold in a breath, trying not to cry out from pain. He digs his fingers into your stick-like arms, and you fear that he’ll break them again and you’ll be forced to stay in your room without food and water again. But instead, the priest brings your cut-filled hands to his nose and smells them, making that disgusting noise of his. “Moon- I want, moon-” he devolves into meaningless mumbles and lets go of your arm, thankfully.

For once, you think that you’ll actually prefer being in the chapel than in this place. You lay down the clothes in a chair and open the door as quickly and soundlessly as you can, before scurrying off through the dusty corridors.

It’s not often that you dream of your mother, but it’s always when the moon is high on the sky and the cold seeps into your bones. You can’t feel your hands, numb from the chill of the chapel. You can’t feel your legs, laying down on the floor uselessly. You still feel the ends of the nightmare, hands around you, hugging you, your belly strangely warm and wet, a loud shrill laugh permeating your brain.

She died on a full moon, bleeding out on you.

You shiver, from cold and fright, her hands still freezing on your back. Camellia told you once of a boy without a leg that swore that he still felt his missing limb sometimes. Maybe it was like that, the touches that your mother left on you forever engraved on your body.

Your hair is getting on your eyes again. You pull the bangs back with your bruised and scarred hand before letting it linger on your forehead, covering the view of the moon through the window. It’s dark, a starless night, and the weeds on your pockets are burning against your legs. You whisper the names of the plants, their properties. You draw their shapes in the air, your fingers travelling the light and shadows.

The moon looks ominously upon you, the red from your memories seeping in. Your hair forever colored in it.

Camellia pulls you to her after you finish dressing up, and drags you along a corridor, right up to her room. Her belly is full, almost bursting, and her braids jump after her, blonde hair pulled back tightly. You can see the shape of a bruise on her cheek, painted green and yellow, her lips pursing in concentration. The other children spend a glance at her, some with pity, some with disdain, and you send them hard glances, cold eyes making them gulp hardly.

Her door is clean, recently washed. Her room is tiny and empty, the bed sheets gone, her pillow laying on the floor. Camellia opens the wardrobe and brings out books, the construction and architecture books that she so loves, a chaplet made from random beads that Father Thompson lost when he threw his against a wall in fits of anger. She gives you the small books, thin and light, and closes your hands around them.

Her smile is melancholic. “I want you to have them,” she says, dark eyes red and puffy. You tilt your head, confusion filling your mind.

“You don’t want your kid to have them?”

Camellia smiles sadly. “I don’t think any of us two will survive.”

“Don’t say that! I’ll cut your tongue off!”

She looks stunned. You take a step forward, you foot falling heavily, and your hair covers your eyes. “You are foolish and kind, and you will survive! That’s what you do!”

“Alfendi-”

“You always outlive every kid that you take care of!”

Your hands come to cover your face. Laughter bubbles up, dark and hysterical. You’ve become foolish as well, attached.

She kneels in front of you, slowly approaching with a hand held out. When Camellia sees that you don’t reject her, she places it on your shoulder. Your laughter calms, steady and low, and your vision blurs until you begin to sob. Your face feels hot and pained, like you’ve been struck, and you run up to Camellia until you are almost close enough to wrap your arms around her. You both flinch at the proximity, and look up at each other. The light of the sunset illuminates the room, orange and warm. The beads of the chaplet shine white and yellow and blue.

Camellia smiles softly. “I’ve always known – you’ve always known – that none of us two will survive here. Because of what happened to us.”

Because of him.

You look at her in the eyes. “I will take care of it. The baby. Make sure nothing happens to it,” you traitor eyes have to drift from hers, and you look at the floor, the books that she gave you pressed tight against your chest. “So, all you have to do is make sure it’s born. Don’t let him kill you before that.”

She nods, a rebellious tear escaping and rolling down her bruised cheek. “I won’t tell him anything.”

“You better not,” you mutter.

No one questions why you’re the one to take care of the baby. You’ve done it before, all those times playing nanny to the younger kids when the adults felt you weren’t doing enough. Father Thompson calls you to his bedroom and you make him moonflower tea while he talks about the baby. His daughter, although he will never acknowledge her and you refuse to let Camellia be disgraced like that. The child is no one’s daughter but Camellia’s.

She didn’t survive. They took her body and cremated it and you only had time to cut off a lock of hair from her corpse to save it, something, anything from her. You stole an old rusty medallion from one of the kids to put the lock in, and it hangs around your neck, just under your shirt.

Father Thompson speaks and you half-listen, half-think, your mind too far away. You remember the blood on the sheets, the crescent moon high on the sky when Camellia screamed for the last time. The hand on your pocket wraps around the moonflower stored there, and you wince at the pain. It seems to be the only thing keeping you awake in this reality.

He suggests names for the child and you nod along, pretending to agree. In truth, she is still nameless, and you refuse to name her anything that he suggests. He ends up settling on something, and writes it down on a paper, a birth certificate most likely. You finish the tea and give it to him. He grabs you by the arm and you flinch before you can stop yourself. The slap is immediate, and immediately after you feel his hand creeping up your thigh. His finger caresses you, back and forth, back and forth.

It feels wrong, like the way blood is too warm when outside of a body, sticky. You bite your tongue.

“Alfendi,” he calls you, “stay here today. I still need something from you.”

You cry quietly, your face hidden from his view when he pulls you close.

That night, you dream of a spectacle of blood, one under a full moon and one under a crescent moon. The child cries somewhere into the dream. Camellia looks pallid. You see your belly covered in blood, and your hands come out red and sticky as well.

The moon is just disappearing in shadow and the blood disappears until all that’s left of your hands are the bruises and cuts.

You have taken to bringing the child with you, rags wrapped around your waist and back to hold her without having to use your arms. The first-floor window is harder to wriggle out off with a baby, but you manage. You don’t fall on your face this time – your balance has been growing as of late, and you can swear that you are taller as well. You go under your tree again, the children congregating in and outside the chapel.

It’s the first time you go to mass ever since Camellia is gone.

Sitting down, you pick up weeds and moonflower from the grass. The child babbles happily, her short blonde fluff blowing with the breeze. In the distance, Father Thompson drones on and on, words that you mouth uninterested.

The man comes out from behind the tree, humming along to some tune. You look sideway and he grins, amused. “You look ready.”

“You didn’t answer my question from last time.”

A dry chuckle. “Entertainment should be enough for me.”

The breeze blows his hair back, his long nose framing dark enjoyment in his eyes. He probably waited for you every Sunday, you think, waiting for you to come and make a decision. You wonder how much of this decision was your own and how much came from someone else. It doesn’t really matter, you think. This is what it came to.

You look at the man properly for the first time, and he looks at you like he knows what you are. He probably does, probably always did, every since the day he found you with the moonflower. His eyes drift down to the child, a quirk of an eyebrow.

“You told me to take care of myself,” you say. “Well, I will.”

The man smiles widely, something feral in his teeth, almost like they are too sharp. The baby giggles. Moonflower itches in your pocket, your hands cold like your mother’s. His hand comes to cradle your face, cold, and you feel your mother coming to caress you, a phantom limb that never disappeared.

“Good luck.”

Father Thompson drones on and on, eyes glazed over in the distance, the choir singing something angelical above him. You take off when they finish, the man long gone, like a shadow, and you go back to the corridors, dusty, crowded, and yet for once you don’t really care to notice it. You reach the stairs, thin and slippery, and the door to the attic is heavier than what you remember. The child is asleep, so you leave her there, knowing full well that she will sleep all afternoon. You pick the moonflower you saved on the floor until your hands are on fire, and you run as quickly and as silently as you can.

Father Thompson is stumbling across the hallway, his protruding belly not helping his uncoordinated movements. You shiver and recoil for a moment, the feeling of his hands still too present for you, and you close your hands until your knuckles turn white and your nails leave small marks on your palms, a few dotted with blood. You take a deep breath, then another, and you go up to the adult, taking him by the elbow and guiding him. He mumbles, complaining of some headache, and you open the door to his room, a new figure of Mother Mary greeting you.

You quickly run to the tea set, boiling water while Father Thompson lays down on his bed, the linens dirtied with his sweat.

“Alfen- _di_ , moon- _Bring me_ -” you hurry with it, and you bring the moonflower from your pockets, laying more than you ever did on the water, two times, three times, until the tea is far more deeply colored than you ever made it. You remember the botanical books that Camellia read to you, the tomes that you memorized back-to-back. _Plants of Great Britain_ , _Medicinal Herbs_ , _Toxicology of Local Flowers_.

Camellia would read it to you night in and night out, giggling when her own name came up. You would look at the schematics, wondering how to find each specimen.

Well, she’d been the one who first put moonflower in your hand.

He’s laying on the bed. A cardiac arrest, maybe, or maybe he fell unconscious. Either way, he won’t wake up again, what with his throat cut off, the razor he always used to shave with on your hand, wet and sticky. It’s dark outside, a new moon, the stars glinting but faded, or perhaps you lost all sensitivity to color except for red. The papers on the bedside table are bloodied, your hand prints covering the words, and _that_ name erased. The child is worth more than a name given by him.

You walk out, razor left behind, clattering on the floor. No child walks around, no adult comes at night to these hallways. A shrill laugh comes from right next to your ear, your belly warm with her blood. The corridors disappear, and you see only black and red, black and red, light in your body, if you can even call it that. Is this what freedom feels like? This thrill, the smell of iron, your pockets finally emptied, your hands alive with red instead of with cuts. The red stage of his death was glorious, his body unmoving. Are you bad for smiling? Are you bad for wanting to scream your laughter? He would have told you so, they all would have told you so, but they always proved to be liars.

Not Camellia. She was the one who gave you the moonflower knowing full well what it was for.

The child cries, small sobs of hunger, and she sucks on your finger when you pick her up. You pat her hair absentmindedly, looking out of the window at the absentee new moon.

“What do you think of Diana? Like the goddess?”

The girl gurgles, her cries forgotten. You take her response as an affirmative one. It’d be a name that Camellia would approve of, you think, a name from one of the temples she liked so much, a name from the moonflower that bought their freedom.

Diana pats your face with a not-so-chubby fist, and you smile down at her.

The man is expecting you right outside of the gates. You pass Diana through the bars before climbing them, and, just like that, you’re outside for the first time in your life. He smiles when he notices the red in your hands, and you just gesture him to return the baby to you.

“Are you ready?” he asks, pointing towards London. “We have much work left to do.”

You look back at the orphanage, the place of your torture, and the place of your first murder. You remember the feeling of moonflower on you hands and the feeling of flesh being cut. Diana looks up inquisitively at you, her curious eyes tired of appreciating the outside world.

You nod at the man. He smirks.

“Let’s get going then, Alfendi Makepeace.”

**Author's Note:**

> Father Sebastian Thompson was found dead in his bedroom, his throat slit. At the same time, two young children, Alfendi Lengton and Helena Thompson, are declared missing. The police uncover a ring of child traffickers and sexual abuse with Rosewell Orphanage at its center.  
> Alfendi Lengton is assumed to be the killer.  
> Years later, Rosewell Orphanage finds a patch of pink camellias that appeared overnight in their gardens. No matter how many times they are removed, they always somehow come back.  
> Keelan Makepeace is arrested by the Scotland Yard. In his stead, two new killers show up, their methods eerily similar to his. The only names they’re known by are A. and D.


End file.
